Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France

by Weisberg, Richard H.

• ISBN13: 9780814793367
• ISBN10: 0814793363
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-07-01
• Publisher: New York Univ Pr

Summary

The involvement of Vichy France with Nazi Germany's efforts to exterminate Europe's Jews has long been a source of debate and contention. At a time when France is taking more responsibility for its role in the deportation and murder of 75,000 of its Jewish citizens, Richard Weisberg here provides a comprehensive and devastating account of the French legal system's complicity with Hitler's genocidal campaign during the dark period known as Vichy.As in Germany, the exclusionary laws passed during the Vichy period formalized institutional anti-semitism. InVichy Law and the Holocaust in France, Weisberg pulls back the curtain on the ways in which the legal community responded to these laws. Private lawyers quickly absorbed the discourse of religious exclusion into the conventional legal framework, expanding the laws beyond their simple intentions, their literal sense, and even their German precedents. Anti-Jewish laws slipped easily and with little resistance into the legal canon and French lawyers often enlisted the laws as a means of career advancement. Examining the work of lawyers and judges, policy makers and administrators, prosecutors and defenders, reporters and academics, Weisberg reveals how legalized persecution actually operated on a practical level.For a discussion about this book at theAmgotweb site, please go to http://www.amgot.org/weisberg.htm

Table of Contents

Foreword
Preface
Introduction: On the Continuing Myth of Vichy	p. 1
Leon Blum, The "Stranger" at Riom: Legalized Ostracism and Vichy's Political Trial	p. 6
The Basic Scheme of Ostracism	p. 37
The Special Treatment of Jewish Legal Professionals	p. 82
Barthelemy: A Catholic Prewar Liberal Is Called to Vichy	p. 113
The Fight to Control the Legal Fate of Jews: Administrators versus Magistrates	p. 159
Out-Naziing the Masters	p. 196
Property Law	p. 241
The Professional Lives of Private Lawyers	p. 293
Reforming the Courts, Reforming the Law: Denationalization, Special Sections, et al.	p. 355
Why Lawyers Underperformed: Xenophobia, Catholicism, and the Talmudic Outsider	p. 386
Selected Bibliography	p. 431
Appendix	p. 437
Index	p. 439
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